


Not Quite What I Expected

by park3rborn



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Food, Gen, Interrogation, Lace gives no fucks about your oppressive rules, Light Angst, Love, Morality, No Romance, Red Templars, Samson is basically Anders but a templar if you think about it, Short, Templars, Tranquil Mages, Want someone to open up to you? Bring them food when they're in prison, World expanding.. essentially, character exploration, implied samson x maddox if you squint, more like "interrogation"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 13:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11060223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/park3rborn/pseuds/park3rborn
Summary: Scout Harding is given a "simple" mission from Leliana herself: find out anything new from the Inquisition's newest prisoner, Raleigh Samson. Turns out, simple isn't quite the right word for it.





	Not Quite What I Expected

**Author's Note:**

> Based off of a: "Lace Harding & Samson This wasn't what I planned." prompt I found on some Dragon Age prompt generator. I now have some opinions about Samson.

The mission seemed simple enough. When Leliana called Scout Harding into a meeting in the war room, she thought she would pass out from pure anxiety. She was convinced this was it: Leliana was going to have her literally killed in the war room. Ironic. The table was large, made of a reddish orange bark, possibly oak. It looked like someone had taken a massive and gnarled tree trunk and sliced it like it was cheese. It was covered in papers and a map of Thedas with various pieces symbolizing troop movements and other important information. There was even one of those Ocularums, which they learned was made of the skulls of Tranquil mages, sitting atop a pile of documents. The whole thing was chaotic and beautiful. Kind of like the Inquisition.  
  
“Scout Harding,” Leliana had said, abruptly interrupting her reverie.  
  
“Yes, ma’am.” A nervous sweat returning to her freckled forehead.  
  
“Your mission is to find out information on our new... guest... Raleigh Samson.”  
  
Lace’s eyebrows furrowed. Leliana didn’t already have all of the information on Samson?  
  
Noticing the scout’s confusion, Leliana continued, “He’s already talked with my people, but everything he has told us is nothing new. We need to make sure that Corypheus does not have any other tricks up his sleeve for the Inquisitor. See if you can find out anything more about Samson and his ties to Corypheus. Write down everything and send me weekly reports.”  
  
“Yes, ma’am.”  
  
“Dismissed.”  
  
Convince Samson to tell her, just some dwarven scout, things that he wouldn’t tell Leliana and her team of professional spies, manipulators, and liars. Simple enough.

 

Scout Harding nearly tripped going down the endless stairs to the dungeon on the first day. There was a step that had been so worn down that a chunk of stone was missing out of it.  
  
“Damned stairs,” she had whispered after righting herself. That’s when she heard an unfamiliar voice, probably Samson, and Varric, of all people. She quietly made her way downstairs to hear better.  
  
“--bela never really liked you, for the record. You really miss that crap from the Hanged Man?” Varric almost sounded friendly. Almost.  
  
“Try eating the shit they feed you down here and you might feel differently.”  
  
“That’s a fair point.”  
  
There was a moment of silence. A chair rumbled across the rocky floor, and Lace pretended to have just been walking down the stairs, not spying on their conversation or anything. Reaching the bottom of the steps, she found Varric putting a chair back against a wall, and Samson a few cells down on the left from the stairwell.  
  
“Scout Harding,” Varric nodded to her as he made his own way up the stairs.  
  
The guard for the prison seemed to be outside of the door that led to what was affectionately known as Skyhold’s Very Own Waterfall, where the rest of the prison had literally been washed away, destroying the better half of the prison structurally. Leliana would be pissed, but so long as she didn’t ask, she wouldn't snitch.  
  
“And who are you supposed to be?” Samson asked as she approached.  
  
“Scout Harding.”  
  
Samson made the universal “so what” gesture, irritating her slightly.  
  
“I have a few questions about your involvement in Kirkwall.”  
  
Samson cocked an eyebrow. “You sure you don’t mean my involvement with an evil would-be god?”  
  
Scout Harding kept her face firmly unamused and passive. “We all know about what you did with Corypheus. I want to know about Kirkwall.”  
  
Samson rolled his eyes and frowned. He turned around in his cell, sitting on the floor with his back to her with a sigh. “Come back later. I’ve had enough talk about Kirkwall for today.”  
  
“Fine.” She figured it would be better to play nice with him if she was going to get any information from him. It wouldn’t do to go to Leliana empty handed by the end of the week. She stood there for a moment, taking in Samson’s rather thin frame with a touch of curiosity about how a man so frail looking could become a commander for a magister, and left.  
  
Samson heard a door slam, and looked back behind him to find his guard glowering at him. The dwarf, Scout Harding, was nowhere to be seen.  
  
“What’re you looking at?” she snapped.  
  
“Nothing.”

 

Scout Harding decided to try and talk with the Commander. He and Samson apparently knew each other before the Inquisition, if what the Iron Bull said while blackout drunk could be trusted. She tentatively knocked on his door.  
  
“Come in.”  
  
“Commander Cullen?”  
  
Cullen turned to face her from his desk, face bright. “Oh-- Scout Harding,” he assumed a more neutral face. Internally, Scout Harding smirked. She knew who he thought she was. “I didn’t expect to see you.”  
  
“Sorry to disappoint.”  
  
“No, it’s no trouble. What can I do for you?”

“Word on the street is that you knew Samson in Kirkwall.”  
  
“Yes, what of it?”  
  
Scout Harding sighed. “Leliana has me-- _me_ , sir-- looking into more information on Samson. I figured that we know as much as we’ll know for a while about his most recent activities unless we get to know him and his history more personally. Sir.”  
  
“It’s a good idea,” Cullen rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Well, we roomed together in Kirkwall after I transferred from Fereldan’s Circle. He was kind, if a little rebellious. He got me in some trouble on occasion, being out past curfew and all that. I always felt I had to try to get him back on the right path. Now, I’m not so sure if I helped or hurt him.”  
  
“Why did he get kicked out, sir?”  
  
“Love.”  
  
“Love, sir?”  
  
“He was smuggling love letters between a mage named Maddox, the Tranquil we found in Dumat’s Shrine, and his lover. Mages in the Circle are forbidden to engage in romantic relations. It’s the rules. The Knight-Commander found out, and he was already on thin ice for insubordination. I may have helped the Knight-Commander find out... he and I didn’t leave on good terms.”  
  
“Sir, if I may?” Cullen nodded. “That’s bullshit.”  
  
“It seems that way now, but I can assure you, it was for the best at the time.”  
  
“But sir! What’s wrong with loving another mage? There aren’t any rules about not loving another warrior, right? Or loving someone of the same gender? It's just love, sir!”  
  
“It’s a safety precaution. I’m not condoning it.”  
  
“Sir, it’s not like the mage was sleeping with the enemy. I--” She stopped herself. “Sorry, sir. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”  
  
Cullen’s gaze softened, “You sound an awful lot like the Inquisitor.”  
  
“She and I agree on a great many things, Commander. I’m not surprised.”  
  
“The real question is: how do you go from delivering illicit love letters between Circle mages to aiding and abetting in the poisoning of your own men by red lyrium?”  
  
“That’s what I’m trying to find out, sir.”  
  
“Please let me know if you do.”  
  
“Of course, sir.”  
  
“Is there anything else I can help you with, Scout Harding? I have a more full report on the Kirkwall templars somewhere in here,” he gestured vaguely at his bookshelf.  
  
“I think that’s all for now. Thank you, Commander.”  
  
“Maker be with you.”  
  
“Maker be with you, sir. And sorry for snapping.”

 

After her talk with the Commander, Scout Harding decided to take a more empathetic approach to gathering information. She pestered Varric about what “crap” he and Samson were discussing the other day, trying to play it off as a casual question about the Hanged Man, and managed to get a cook to make it. Fish and egg pie. It had a weird smell, but it looked good. Well, better than what passed as food for prisoners. The guard was away again when she came into the dungeon. Honestly, it was rather unprofessional at this point. Samson lay on his side, arm under his head as a pillow, facing the back wall. She slid the plate with a fork under the bars of the cell. He moved to flip around at the sound of plate on stone, but Scout Harding was already leaving.  
  
“I’ll be back for the dishes soon.”  
  
“Wait.”  
  
She turned around expectantly.  
  
“You’re Scout Harding, right? You asked about Kirkwall yesterday.”  
  
“I did. Are you willing to talk?”  
  
“What do you want to know?” He took a deep, blissful whiff of the pie. Meanwhile, she took a seat on the ground in front of the cell. Out of arm's reach, naturally.  
  
“Were love letters really the reason you got kicked out of the Order?”  
  
He smiled wryly. “Some compared me to that bastard Anders. I talked with him a couple times, actually. I didn’t like putting up with the shit rules that the Order and the Circle imposed on people.” He ate a few bites of the pie, groaning his approval. “A life without being able to love someone, and being locked up? I couldn’t take it. Cullen told me it was stupid, but I did it anyway. So, yes. I got kicked out because of love letters. You want to know what they did to them after I got caught? They made them Tranquil. They’d passed their damned Harrowing, it wasn’t allowed, and Meredith made them Tranquil anyway.”  
  
“How do you go from smuggling love letters to feeding your own men red lyrium? You knew it would kill them. It doesn’t make sense.”  
  
“I don’t know. Power? The allure of having the opportunity to destroy the Order? He offered me so much. You have no idea what it’s like being on the streets in Kirkwall as an ex-Templar, Scout Harding.”  
  
“I don’t suppose I do.”  
  
“Did you know the Chantry poisons us with your dwarf dust? It’s our leash. My men were never going to be freed of it anyway. If Corypheus was going to become a god anyway, I could guarantee them favor. That’s better than getting a guarantee with some absent Maker, if you ask me.”  
  
“So you did what you thought was best.”  
  
“Yes, I guess I did.”  
  
The two sat in relative silence as Samson finished his pie. Scout Harding would have a lot to write for Leliana. She would probably start it off with "This was not quite what I had expected".   
  
“Thanks for the food.” He slid the empty plate and fork back outside of his cell.  
  
Pensively, Scout Harding picked them up. She turned to leave. “I’m sorry about Maddox.”  
  
“So am I.”


End file.
